Chocolate and vanilla pinwheel biscuits

I’m trying to challenge myself during lockdown as much as trying to use what’s in the cupboard so was looking for plain flour biscuits as there is no SR flour to be had right now - I do wonder if the whole nation is currently baking cakes.  This is from Mary Berry’s Baking Bible and the first time I’ve done anything like this - ie an attempt at something more decorative and precise.  I was pretty pleased with these although I’d play around a bit more with flavours if I made them again.

Baguettes

I sent off our hunter gatherer (aka my boyf’s son) to get all our food requirements for the weekend on Friday and he came back without baguettes, which were scheduled to be used for another outing of chicken with 40 cloves of garlic. Nothing for it but to make my own.  I only decided that today, however, so was unable to make the traditional 12 hour prove version and so luckily found this 4 hour version on line.  I was so impressed with how these looked and they tasted like proper bread so all round these were a massive success.

Sticky ginger and orange cake

One for only the most patient this one as Mary Berry suggests in her ‘Baking Bible’ that you should leave it 2 days before icing in order to get the stickiness coming through.  I’ve done that and to be honest next time I make this cake, which I inevitably will, I won’t bother waiting as to me it looked loads better when it was just baked.  Nice gingery flavour and the orange occasionally comes through.

Chicken with 40 cloves of garlic

My lockdown challenge is to let my boyf’s son choose something for me to cook and he is then our hunter gatherer as the prime shopper in the household.  This is from Nigella’s Kitchen, my absolute favourite of her books and I’m not really sure why I haven’t tried this before.  It was total deliciousness!  I had been worried about it as I’d thought that the lad had forgotten to get spring onions and so I used ordinary onions - he turned up in the kitchen half an hour before it was due to come out of the oven and said that the spring onions were in the bottom of the fridge - I lobbed them in anyway.  I really don’t think that the onion substitution made any difference.  Whilst this is not the best looking dish, it was just lovely.  Will definitely make this again.

Granny Boyd’s biscuits

These are from Nigella’s How to be a Domestic Goddess and fit into the lockdown conundrum that is what do I have in the cupboard as our shopper has forgotten to get us sweet treats.  We had them with previously made white chocolate ice-cream (Nigella Summer) and very nice they were too.